 Hello there, it's Sandy and I have a little bit of pyrography to show you, a bunch of gifts that I've been working on to give for the holidays, but it's not a tutorial. I'm gonna tell you a story about the time that I believed art lies and you're gonna be surprised at what saved me from them. When I was a small child, many many many decades ago, I was very into art as you might suspect. I was that kid who always had crayons and coloring books. At my disposal and I loved, loved, loved getting a new box of 64s on Christmas morning and Santa, if you're out there watching, I dare say I would love a new box of 64s. That would still be sweet. Well, when I was little, I loved to color. I had a passion for it, but I did not have skills for it. That was just not my, my thing. I didn't worry about it because I was a kid. Kids don't worry about comparing their work to others at that point. I'm envious of children for having that kind of ability to create and not compare their work, but I love doing it and the passion was there. The learning took place later. So as I got into a little bit in high school and then way more in college, I started learning really how to draw. But I had grown as, as I was moving that direction toward more refined tools like colored pencils and colored pencil became my jam. That was just something I loved, loved, loved to work with. Even though in college we were exposed to other things, the thing I always came back to was color pencil. That was just what I wanted to do. The other thing that I wanted to do was what I went to college for, which was teach art and sadly all the schools were cutting budgets like crazy and the thing that was getting chopped was art. There was going to be very few jobs left by the time I graduated for me to be able to like have a roof over my head. So I opted to go for a graphic design major so that I could have a job job and put a roof over my head because I liked to eat and you know, not sleep outside. So got myself jobs and what happens to everybody it seems either jobs or family gets in the way of those passions. And since I did get some of my creativity out at work, I really neglected my own art time for maybe 10 years or so. I did not do much drawing at all. I tried occasionally I would get into it for a couple of days and then something would would snap and I would just put that thing aside and it was kind of sad. I really wished that I could get back to that. But I was just moving on with life and figuring when I'm old maybe that's what'll happen when I retire I'll get back to my drawing. Well, maybe in my mid to late 30s, I think it was, I joined a ministry and in this ministry one of the things they did was put on these retreats and at the retreats they would give all the participants these wonderful little things. They would give bookmarks and they would make place cards for the tables. They would make place mats for dinner. They would make little cards to leave for them. Like it was just the sweetest thing. All these beautiful little encouragement things and just keep saying things. They were just lots of crafty things and I thought okay it's creative and it's in the ministry so yeah I'll go join them. And even though I didn't know how to make any of that stuff, I didn't know what they were doing with it and how they did it, I knew there were stamps involved and that I wasn't a stamper because I was colored pencil artist. I was not a stamper but I thought maybe I can go at least help them with my colored pencils. So they invited me to come join them and one Saturday I went to their the church basement and there were just tables everywhere and all these ladies were there and they had massive boxes of stuff. Just massive. I mean I had never seen so much stuff. Boxes and boxes of stamps, things that they have had since like the 70s and they were still using in the 90s. It was nuts and you know okay fine. They've got all this stuff. All I kept thinking was I am not a stamper and they should sell all this stuff and give it to the poor because there are a lot of people who could use like a roof over their head and here we are with these boxes of crazy stuff. Nonetheless I said okay I'm gonna help and I would walk around and look for somebody who had stamped something who needed it to be colored. I had my packet color pencils and I would sit and I would help them color. So that seemed like my contribution. I could just do that and somebody would offer me hey do you want to come over here and stamp with me? I'd be like nope not a stamper I color. That's my thing. Well little by little over time I did start to do a little bit of stamping just a wee bit. I was not going to get involved in buying all the stuff but I would try to step in and help anywhere that I could to just be and assist to them. But one of the things that I was wishing at the time that I could do even though I kind of didn't have any skills in it I wanted to go join the guys because there were men involved in this as well and they were doing woodshop types of stuff at somebody's house. Like I would see the things they made I never really got to see them do it but one guy would make these beautiful pen holders. It was like a like a big pen but it was in a wood thing. It was all carved and gorgeous and there was another guy that his thing was making hierography projects. So he would make bookmarks. He'd get little cups and do some designs on them. It was just beautiful beautiful work and I thought that looked like more fun but again I told myself I can't do that. I do color pencil. Can't do that because this is this is me. This is who I am. This is what I do. But it was the stamping that little by little started to break through that lie in my head that I had told myself for so many years that I do color pencil. That's what I do. You would think that in college I would have learned that because we were exposed to other mediums and other things but it hadn't stuck because I still had that thing in my head that I continued to say over and over again. I can't do that. I can do this. I can do this really well. I can't do that thing over there. Well needless to say while I was working on this pyrography these stories came back to my mind and I was just thinking about those guys and how much I wished that at the time I had not put that out of my head and said I can't do it. Even if all I did was to go watch them and see how they do this because it wasn't until recently that I bought this pyrography kit and you know it sat here staring at me for a while and when I got it out I had just been having so much fun working with these things. Now I don't know if I'm doing anything right here or not. It is quite possible some professional pyrographer is going to come by and say are you nuts? You are doing that the hard way. You need to heat your temperature to this or use that nib for that and you know that's okay. That's that's what people want to do. That's great but what I found I was doing here was taking all that knowledge that I have from being a colored pencil artist and I've done of course before now tons of other mediums but I this feels like colored pencil to me but with a hot pencil instead and I'm just using one color and trying to make darks and lights and create shading and contrast in each one of these pieces which is just kind of a weird but cool feeling. I just like how the textures are going on this even though that might not be traditional pyrography. I have no clue in the world but I felt bolder and bolder as I was playing with this to try something a little bit more to see how much more shading I could get. Could I do some rounded shapes because that's what I do in all my other mediums and if I can do that in other mediums what's to stop me from doing it in pyrography with just a hot pen instead of a colored pencil or a Copic marker or something. So I am super glad that stamping came along and shook me loose from the thinking that I had had back then that I couldn't do anything other than the one thing that I knew I could do really well like it it helped me to see that there's there's other ways that I can be creative and I don't have to just do that one thing it's why I tell people who say I'm just a whatever I'm just a card maker I'm just a scrapbooker and when you say that often enough your brain starts to believe it your brain hears you say it and says okay now I have to make that come true and the only way to make it not come true is to do it and prove to yourself that it's not true and even though you might say well I can't draw either well then learn to draw and then you can do all these other things like you can learn the skills you don't have to be born with that golden pencil in your hand and you can learn to do so much more than you ever thought you could and that's my greatest joy in being an art teacher is seeing people come to that realization and recognize that they can do more than they ever thought so these are some of the gifts that I have made for my family for Christmas I'm going to be making some other small projects in the coming week and putting them on my website either Black Friday or throughout December I'm not really sure how that's going to work out stay tuned to the channel and I'll tell you when stuff's available if you want to take home one of my precious little pyrography things and yeah I can have one for you Christmas all right I'll see you later go create something every day bye bye